Animation Fade In/Fade Out

Write Idea

Hey all!

So I ventured into the world of animation.  And I wanted to make an object appear and disappear in the timeline.  I will admit, that my knowledge of the timeline/animation function is still limited.  So, going forward, is it possible to make objects fade in and fade out in the timeline?  I tried using the opacity function at different keyframes, but it doesn't seem to be working...

Will I need to buy AniMate2?  KeyMate or GraphMate in order to have this function happen?

Thank you in advance for all the advice.

mavante

I've never found any way in Daz Studio, and I believe I've read in more than a few threads that DS animation does not support animating visibility.

Your post is a bit ambiguous because Fade In/Fade Out usually means fading in or out an entire scene, at least in video editing terms. That's easily handled in any video editing software once you have a rendered video of your animation.

But you specifically mention making "objects fade in and fade out." Are you trying to make just certain props or objects gradually appear and disappear? If so, you'd probably need to render your animation in two or more passes: one for the background and then one for each such object. You'd render the background scene or set or environment without those objects, then render the timeline again from the same camera with the prop or object by itself in the animation, with no background so everything around the prop or object is transparent.

Then you would overlay those renders in your video editing software, using different "tracks." That way you can use in/out fades on the object(s) track to make it appear and disappear.

If the solo objects need ground shadows, you can leave Draw Ground on in Render Settings, but with no visible ground, and your  object will cast shadows.

That's the only way I know of to do it.

ETA: If the amazing appearing or disappearing prop or object is not itself animated, and your camera doesn't move, you can just render a still image of it solo, with transparency. Then in video editing software make that image last as long as you want, overlaid, and fade it in and out. Depending on whether it is in front of or behind other objects in the scene, you might need to make a mask in the video editing software to mask it out of the front objects, but with a non-moving camera POV, that's usually pretty easy to accomplish in most video editing software.

Gordig

What Mavante said. As far as I know, visibility/opacity can’t be keyframed within DS. 

Richard Haseltine

The control cannot be keyed directly, but you can link it to a node property that can be keyed using a script. See these sampes:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/elements/post_load_material_proxy_create/start
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/elements/post_load_material_proxy_link_properties/start

TheMysteryIsThePoint

In Blender, you just set a keyframe directly on the material's alpha channel. Done. Or you can do it without keyframes at all by typing an equation right into the field, like 1 - ( #time / 30 ) for it to fade out completely by frame 30.

If you're going to want to do things like that, consider that Daz Studio is the best character creation tool available, but is terrible for animation.